The Mallard God Complex (Chapter 1)

The Mallard God Complex

            I watch lazily from the street as all my belongings fly out the window of my third story, one bedroom piece of shit apartment. Up there, just above the street lamps, I can hear the verbal assault that accompanies a breaking heart. If only I had my keys, there might have been something to do about this.   CRASH!  I step to the side as my computer screen falls onto the pavement beside me. It’s a little sad to watch everything I have worked for slowly disappear out the window, but that’s love . . . I guess . . .

1. Beginning at the Beginning

            The first night I met Sheryl was over three months ago; three long, nasty, wild months. How it began is still somewhat of a mystery to me as I don’t really recall introducing myself, although she swears I did. Alcohol can have a sort of paralytic effect on the brain, freezing judgment, as well as shattering the crystals of memory. That night is a haze for me. The only memory that remains clear is of me, pissing in the bathroom, and staring intently at a painting of a mallard.

            The painting hung right above the one toilet (an odd place for a painting), so that the mallard was staring directly at me while I pissed. It might’ve been a heron, but for ease of the story, let’s call it a mallard. I’m only fifty percent sure it was a duck, but it really doesn’t matter. OK, sixty percent sure it was a duck. Whatever the hell it was, it stared directly at me while I was taking a piss. There was something eerie about it.

            The background was a nondescript swamp that could have been anywhere. The reeds in front and the mallard were all painted in vivid colors, almost photo quality (it might’ve been a photo), but the background was blurry. Lazy artists, they can’t even be bothered to do  the background of a stupid painting! What is it supposed to be anyway? It looks nothing like a duck; which might have been because it was indeed a heron, but again, I really can’t be all that sure.

            “What the hell are you supposed to be?!” I yelled accusatorily at the painting. I waited, and pissed, hoping for a response. The mallard continued to stare at me and I felt a chill creep slowly up my spine. It felt as though the mallard was actually looking back at me. There were real eyes behind the painting. “Sneak up on me while I piss do you?!” I reached a hand forward and poked viciously at what I was now sure were eyeholes in the painting.

            My finger broke through the painting and left a hole where before there had been canvas. At the back of the painting was solid wood. I stubbed my finger and swore some more, spilling piss on my shoes. Overall the night was going pretty well for me. As I zipped up I stared at the substantially creepier version of the painting. It now sported a dark socket for one of the bird’s eyes. I laughed to myself and then stumbled out of the bathroom and into the warm conversation of the pub.

            The mallard in it of itself is not important, but what is important is that some time that night, I met Sheryl. After the mallard painting everything else is pretty much a blank canvas. I could have gone to an underground fight-club, won the match, and gotten into an argument about Syrian foreign policy with a particularly shanky bum, and I wouldn’t have known it. For those who are unclear, the verb shanky signifies someone who is more than likely to shank someone else. Those who are still unclear, read a prison book.

            What is important to this story is what she claims happened. Fast-forward to one month later, we’re in a relationship, and things have passed into the stage in which I am forced to interact with her friends. That particular night I was sitting in the middle of an uncomfortably crowded booth. I had been talked into an awkward double-date (is there another kind?) with her two friends Steve and Lailie (I’ve always hated that name). I was between Lailie and Sheryl, listening uncomfortably as they gloated back and forth about their respective boyfriends, while Steve and I sat in silence. It was the typical double date in which two overly zealous and competitive friends attempted to show how each of them had managed to best the other in the sticky game of trapping a mate.

            I think that dating can often be like trying to fight for your life in the web of love, in which there are constantly other flies trying to attract the spider to eat them next. All of the flies are very excited to have the spider come to them, until they realize what it intends to do. In the simile it is clear that the spider wants to eat them.  In life, the mate’s intentions may not be as clear, but the result is ultimately the same. Someone is getting eaten at the end of the night.

            People are always appalled and shocked when they hear about the mating habits of the praying mantis, but metaphorically, we’re all in the same boat.  I can hear my Beatles records crashing down on the street, no doubt as a result of a similar statement. But that is beside the point. I loved my records dearly; but my love for them doesn’t really apply to how I met Sheryl, or why I stayed with her.   In fact, things we had in common, or shared interests for that matter, never really played a factor.  

            “So, how did you and Michael meet?” The question hangs in the air like a loaded revolver, pointed right at my head. I have two options: Tell her how we really met (shot in the head), or sit in silence and wait for Sheryl to tell the story (live to fight another day). With options like those, who really needs to choose? Sheryl gave me a quick sideways look, letting me know that if I ever wanted to get laid again  it would be better if I said nothing and agreed with whatever bullshit tale she concocted.

            “You see I was alone in a bar, all by myself.” That sentence, albeit redundant, was in fact true. She was there alone that night, but I can assure you the rest of it is fabrication. I don’t remember any of it, but never in my life have I had a romantic bone in my body, and alcohol did not act as a surgical tool to implant one that night. I’ve been told that when I’m drunk I’m really more of an asshole than anything else.

            “Michael came up to me and asked to by me a drink. I accepted, we hit it off, and before I knew it he was whisking me through the streets by moonlight. By the end of the night he had bought me a rose from a street vendor and I had fallen in love.” I nearly gagged at the falsity of the swooning coming from across the table.

            While I can’t remember much of what happened, I can remember where I woke up, and it wasn’t my apartment. Something tells me that rather than waiting for the first date, we went back to her place, did the deed, and then I was stuck. Checkmate for the spider once again, better luck next time I suppose. The moonlight story was better suited to polite company than the truth. My truths are often hard and lewd, which often makes conversations more beneficial for everyone involved when I lie and dull the edges my diatribes. Real truth, the hardest truth, is something I save for those late nights at my laptop, window open, bottle in hand.

            The truth about my predicament at the moment was that I had become stuck. Once at the point of double dating, it is infinitely harder to break away from a coupling without some sort of blowback. I sat there quietly for the rest of the evening as they debated which of the two silent men at their sides was the most thoughtful and caring. As I sat, it dawned on me; the question that would drive me into the street with all of my belongings raining down beside me. It was the seed of my freedom.

            The seed was a simple thought: What the fuck am I doing here? Not meaning ‘here’ as in the relationship, nor in the restaurant; or even necessarily what I was doing existing at that moment, but a vague sense of ‘what the fuck?’ regarding my general life. I looked at the faded red cushions beneath me and wondered why the restaurant owner had picked that color. Was it because the color red had been demonstrated in age demographics of 18-45 to increase appetite? Was it because of the association with family and love? Or was it a more sinister notion that red caused more fights for the disgruntled old man behind the register to watch?

            Deep in the cushions I felt something. It definitely wasn’t anger, but it certainly wasn’t being at peace with the world either. I felt like this every time I had sat in a similar situation; stuck with a girl I really didn’t give a shit about, and following her blindly wherever she told me to go. I didn’t feel a sense of wasted time, but I did yearn for the freedom of the open road. I wanted to be alone, I wanted to abolish her reign of tyranny, I wanted to slap myself in the face and wake up.

            “Check please.” Dinner was over; I had sat there silently for what appeared to have been three hours. The clock read eleven PM. The next morning I had work. Work in those days was hell, as I’m sure it will always be in some way. I don’t much like working; it takes away from the finer things in life such as: Loving, music, and drugs. I shouldn’t include drugs in there as there are perhaps children who will read this someday and I don’t want to turn them into opiate induced speed addicts, but god damn is that marijuana a good time.

            Sheryl was shocked by the abruptness, but she settled on being done with dinner, presumably because she had won. After three hours of spacing out I could see the defeated look of one who knows they have lost that one fight they most wanted to win. A little dramatic yes, but it was all these women ever did. When they weren’t fighting over whose boyfriend was sweeter, they were working dead end jobs in second tier retail stores, selling garments to customers who wanted nothing more than to not buy garments.  Their lives were small, consumed by an industry of larceny, and I didn’t have an ounce of shit to give about it.

            It may seem like I held a deep level of contempt for the woman I was allegedly in love with, and, well that’s true. But the other, uglier truth was that she gave me sex, and no one on this green earth can say that sex is not a powerful motivator. Sex has brought down kingdoms, led to crucifixions, and toppled even the mightiest leaders. Unfortunately as males we find ourselves so preoccupied with sticking ourselves into other humans that we often ignore the less base instincts of logic and reason. Hence the pissing contests between rival nations trying to show how they can stick it to another  better if given the opportunity.  It’s a bit sad really.

            Anyway, that night I felt much like one of those warring nation figureheads.  Though I wasn’t really in a pissing contest with anyone, I was dealing with an irate madman making unreasonable demands. I’m talking of course about Sheryl. She is of course a mad woman, but something about the latter term doesn’t have the same ring to it. I assure you the former isn’t sexist, but merely a literary preference based on enunciation, pronunciation, and masturbation.  I guess Freud was right.

            “What do you think you were doing?!” She says as soon as we get into the alleyway, out of earshot from the other couple. The goodbyes had been perfectly pleasant, but like the citizens of Pompeii I felt a rumbling beneath my feet as the end neared.  At that moment, I marveled at how being in relationships makes us experts at defusing very specific bombs. It is important to know when it is going to go off, and what exactly needs to be done to stop it. As she stood there yelling at me in the alleyway, I calmly analyzed the situation.

            Young female, mid-twenties, very aggravated.  Spittle flying from the left corner of mouth to the pavement.  Frothing  not due to rabies, but one can never truly be sure, best to stay away from the mouth until further examination is conducted. Hands are clenched in a display of anger and intimidation. They are small fists. Getting hit by them will probably not hurt as much as if they were larger. Well at least there is that.  Overall threat assessment - level six. Diffuse with the usual.

            The usual consisted of a very sappy apology as well as a bullshit excuse.  This was no exception to the level six rule. “I’m so sorry honey; I just didn’t know what else to do. I just love you so much, and couldn’t bear not having a few moments alone with you tonight before I had to go to bed.”

            Fist clenching has ceased, as well as tension in the arms. Eyes are brimming over with tears. That’s a good sign; mission accomplished everyone, wonderful job. Let’s all go out for drinks to celebrate! She begins to cry and then hugs me. Her sobs are so violent that someone in the street might have thought I was beating her. That would have been a truly awkward situation. To avoid this image I gently pat her back in a very clearly non-threatening manner. Through choked sobs I can hear her talking about how sweet I am and how sorry she is that she overreacted. Once again the bomb is diffused and I get to live another day.

The Robbery: A Tale Inspired by Asimov Magazine's Restrictive Guidelines

The Robbery

By, Ashton Macaulay

5:20PM Friday

     “Put the goods in the bag! We’re running out of time.” I yelled to my partners. The vault hung open, perfectly exposed. The riches inside were ripe for the taking. “We’ve got fifteen seconds until we’re all going back to the kennel.” We had all been there before; the big house was a scary place, not one I wanted to go back to. Hundreds of us crammed in like animals, I could still here the screaming. I knew I should’ve recruited better than these two. Never could stick to a timetable.

The two of them were certainly not the best for the job. Jimmy, the peg leg, so aptly named as one of his legs was missing, may have looked slow, but could run just as well without it. Problem was he had a bit of a problem with ‘The Stuff’. Didn’t really have a street name for it, but one sniff was enough to take him off his ass for hours at a time. He had to be carefully watched during these delicate operations or his habit threatened to blow the whole thing.

     

    Snuffles was a strange one. It was a name that he had picked up somewhere right out of the orphanage. It fit him well. The guy constantly sounded like he had a cold, couldn’t stop sniffing. His problem wasn’t so much drugs, as it was attention to detail. He would get hung up on the tiny pieces of a bigger operation and it tended to slow him down.

Unfortunately for me they were my only options. Most of the others in the neighborhood had gone legit, obeying orders, working for a broken system. They were content to shuck and jive for the occasional pat on the head. Not me, I wasn’t going to be a part of that hierarchy. The heist was going to take me above all of that.

     “We just have a few more bags in here!”

     “There’s no time! Get what you have now and let’s go!” It had never been about the endgame for me. One or two bags would have been enough to make it worth it. Breaking into the biggest vault of them all and stealing what they didn’t want me to have would have been enough. Of course, when it comes to splitting shares, it’s never that easy. People get greedy, and the heist just keeps getting bigger.

     “Alright, alright, get the last bag Jimmy, we’re out of here.” It was too late. We had spent too much time at the vault and now from far away I could hear the authorities coming. They were coming fast too. It was not in their nature to show mercy to common criminals like us. We had to move, and we had to move fast.

     “Oh no man, we’re done for. Game over!” Snuffles was both a coward, and had watched one too many movies. He didn’t do well under pressure. Each minute that passed I regretted my choice in accomplices even more.

     “Shut up and get the bags. We’re out of here.” I could see them rounding the corner, charging toward us. Their guns were out, there was no time left. We had an out, but it required time. Stashed just on the other side of the vault was a toxic gas, nothing deadly, but enough to distract The Authorities while we made our escape.  

     “We’ve got five seconds, get the gas! Move it!” Jimmy and Snuffles were running now, both had two bags each, clenched tight in their grip. I picked up a bag and ran after them. Shots rang out. I continued running, nothing was going to keep me from the prize. Too long had I labored on this plan for it to go south now, there was no way out other than the gas. It was either that, or back to the kennel.

     To my right there was a thump as Snuffles hit the ground hard. He screamed, writhing in pain. Just the sound of it made my hairs stand on end. I might have been able to save him, but nothing else mattered in that moment. There was no choice but to keep running. If I stopped moving then I would fall as well. I picked up one of his bags and continued forward.

     “Wait! You can’t just leave me here! We were partners remember?” Jimmy looked at him for a second, looked at me, and followed suit. He may have mouthed the word ‘sorry’, but I can’t be sure. The whole thing is so blurry. “You can’t do this! You’ll never take me alive!” His last sentence is cut short as another shot rings out. There was silence, followed by the pounding of boots running after us.

     “Come on Jimmy, forget him! He’s gone.” Jimmy picked up the pace. In no time we were behind the vault and I was scrambling to pull out the escape plan. My arms were trembling. Unable to move them I turned around and pulled the package out with my legs. My kicking was frantic. I may not have liked Jimmy, but I didn’t wish any harm on him either. Death always takes its toll, whether we want it to or not.

     “Boss?”

     “Open the package and let’s get the hell out of here.” Jimmy slices open the package. The smell makes my hair ruffle. “Let’s go!” The side of the vault rings as a shot hits it inches from my head. The guard had rounded the corner. There was a moment where I stared at him and he stared right back. In our eyes there was mutual hatred. The strength was overpowering, moving almost, but it did not last long.

     He leveled his gun again. His blonde hair moved slightly in the breeze revealing cold, blue eyes. That man was a killer, we both knew it. In that instant I took a chance, dodged left, and ran as fast as I could away from him. The ping came to my right, barely missing me. Jimmy and I were around the corner, bags gripped tight. From behind I could hear the guard reeling at the smell, and shortly after, vomiting.

     We ran until our legs grew sore and we could carry the bags no more. When we stopped we were in back of an apartment complex, hidden in the alleyway. The authorities had long since stopped their pursuit. We were free. “Did we do it boss? Are they gone?”

     “Yes, I think so. Let us see what our hard work has bought us.” I reached down and tore open one of the bags. From inside spilled the sweetest thing I have ever smelled. Apples, old takeout boxes, empty coffee cups, and cans of aged tuna fell onto the ground before us. The score was great, it was everything I had ever dreamed of. “A moment of silence for our fallen companion before we feast on this bounty.”

     Jimmy bowed his head and lowers his tail in a sign of somber solidarity. I did the same and we sat for a moment. Emotions ran wild within me. The greatest score I could have ever dreamed of was over. There was nothing to do but enjoy, and yet, I felt empty. I still feel it to this day. Late at night I howl with the memory, but in the end there was nothing to do about it. “Dig in Jimmy. 9 lives don’t last like they used to…”

5:20PM Friday (The Perspective of The Authorities)

     “God Damnit! Your cats are in the dumpster again! They’re spilling trash all over the sidewalk. Take care of it Rick!” The woman was old, crotchety, and waving a broom in front of her.

     “Alright Mrs. Kenway I’ll get them out. Sorry.” Rick walked back into his house and grabbed a spray bottle filled with water and lemon juice. They said cats would be easier than having a dog…

     Rick stepped out into the street and saw the dumpster at the end of the cul de sac. Inside, three cats were rolling around in garbage, trying to pull the bags out. “Hey! Get away from there!” He ran toward them, shooting water furiously. He was fast, but the cats were faster. They were grabbing the bags in their mouths and making a break for it.

     “Oh no you don’t.” Rick had experience with these particular cats. They were always tipping over garbage cans and causing general unrest. For a while the other cats had followed suit, but for the most part they had grown out of the bad behavior. There were only three that continued to misbehave. Rick was ten feet from the dumpster. Two of the cats were his: Jimmy and Snuffles. Jimmy was a wild card, but could usually be reined in with catnip. Snuffles was slow, and wouldn’t be too hard to take down.  

     Snuffles slowed down as he ran out of the dumpster, recognizing Rick and the spray bottle in his hand. Rick leveled the bottle and fired. He hit him on the first try. Wretched meowing erupted from the street, and he sprayed him again to stop it. The other two rounded the dumpster, trying to escape. “Get back here!”

     Rick came around the dumpster and saw the two cats, bags in mouths pawing at a cardboard box behind the dumpster. He shot haphazardly and missed. Once again he leveled the spray bottle, but for a moment locked eyes with the unknown tabby. They were intense, giving him pause about his actions. Come on man. For Christ’s sake, it’s a cat… He squeezed to fire and the box before him tore open. Inside was a five week old halibut that had been decomposing, forgotten beneath the dumpster. The smell was unbelievably horrid.

     “Oh God.” He squeezed the bottle but missed and hit the dumpster. Rick fell to his knees and vomited all across the warm pavement. Shame was all around him, swirling. By the time his eyes had stopped watering the cats were long gone, and so was the garbage. Morose at his lack of cat parenting ability Rick grabbed Snuffles and tromped back to his house.

End

Afterword:

     I would like to state that I wrote this purely because Asimov magazine said they would not accept any stories about talking cats. Well I wrote it anyway!!

The Spoon

The Spoon

     I can recall my long days sitting at the office, The humming of the pneumatic tubes, shooting in all directions around me, trying desperately to find their place as I firmly sat in mine. Papers would whistle past my head at speeds beyond my wildest imagination, but for the most part I was content to sit at my desk and read stacks of papers. In these papers were numbers of great importance. The accounts for the entire western division of Poly-Corp resided between their carefully manicured, carbon-copy pages.

     Every day was the same routine. I would walk in at approximately 8:07 AM, twenty-three minutes before my shift started, but a full seven minutes later than being a half hour early. It was the perfect time so as not to appear too eager, but just eager enough. I would walk over to the grey filing cabinet to my right and pull a large red lever. From above a tube would open and drop a fresh stack of papers into the first row of filing cabinets. The noise was horrendous, but I didn’t mind it so much.

     The room itself looked a tad like the layer of an evil scientist. Nothing all that exciting went on in there, but it looked as though it might. Every corner was filled with a series of clear, twisting tubes which delivered mail to rooms around the office. Carefully nestled in the middle of them was a drop slot. This was where my mail came. After pulling the big lever I would walk to the tube, check for mail, and usually find a small white card.

     On this day it read: Thanks Pete for whatever it is you do down there. Keep up the mediocrity! –Sincerely, The Management.

     Gingerly, I would pick up the note, grab a red pushpin from the right drawer of my desk, and stick the note to the wall. After the first year I had filled all of the cracks on one wall with tiny white notecards. No one came in to see them, but if they had, I can only imagine that they would have been impressed. Some said: You are adequate. or, Today is Wednesday. Beauty was to be found everywhere in that office. Each corner was full of wonderful surprises for the passerby.

     The file machine wooshed and clanked like a giant metal beast from the corner. “Oh hush now, it’s only a thousand leaflets, nothing to worry about.” I said to the machine. It might have looked odd that I was talking to myself, but only the tiny black camera in the far right corner of the room would have seen it. I gave it a smile and a knowing wink, and continued to talk to the machines around me. “Alright boys, another long day ahead of us! Who’s ready to balance some budgets and cook some books.” The angry filing machine belched a cloud of black smoke, signaling that it was finished receiving the day’s load of papers.

     When the clock struck 8:25AM it was time for coffee. In a small, brown cupboard sandwiched between two wastepaper bins was an equally small, pristine, white coffee cup. After heaving the stack of papers from the filing cabinets to my desk I grabbed the cup and walked out into the hallway. The walls were a sort of drab grey that reminded me of cold, Russian soup. Why the soup had to be Russian I really haven’t a clue, but the point was that they were drab, and for the most part when I picture borscht that’s what I think of.

     The break room was and is approximately twenty five and a half steps from my office. I have counted these steps often as I have had quite some time to do so. The sound that squishes up from the both hard and soft carpet is a fond memory that still brings muted excitement to my tired heart. The door to the break room was brown oak, or imitation oak, and glorious to the point of envy. I opened the door with a gold handle that was almost certainly not gold and entered the break room.

     That morning there was two other people in line for coffee. The machine took notoriously long to finish, but usually spat out its contents by around 8:27AM.  “Morning.” Sniveled Pierre, a crotchety old caricature of an old French stereotype. His mind had never managed to leave the late 1940s though his body had continued to travel unabated through the waves of time. Where his spine might have once been close to straight there was the beginning of a dowagers hump. That morning he wore a tattered black coat over a soiled, black and white stripe T-Shirt. “Is this coffee going to be ready sometime within the next century?! If I do not have it soon my bowels will seize and rust, only to leave behind the frayed shell of a man who can no longer excrete their contents, and breathes only to become closer to that old friend the God of death.”

     He grimaces at the thought of his own statement, revealing a set of teeth more crooked than the streets of San Francisco. “Really Pierre, is that necessary?”

     “I’m sorry that I haven’t yet resigned myself to a system which neither provides nor contemplates my basic human rights!” He pointed his finger at the little black bulb on the ceiling and began to curse wildly in French, his accent dripping like maple syrup from a tree. 

     “Ooh, I wish you wouldn’t do that Pierre.” Said the mousy man in front of him. His name was Jim. He had been there for even longer than me. All I can say about him is that he was unassuming, his shirts never fit quite right, and the hair atop his head more clearly resembled a shrubbery than it had any right to.

     “Shut up and make the coffee pig! I know my rights.” I stayed out of the fight, not wanting to interrupt my schedule. It was 8:26 in the morning. We were seconds away from the coffee coming out of the machine when BAM! The door burst open and two men in grey suits with dark glasses burst through the door. Each wore a large earpiece with a plethora of blinking lights on it.

     “Get away from me!” Yelled Pierre, dropping his coffee mug and backing against the counter, baring his teeth like a cornered animal. The two men nodded unemotionally to each other and grabbed one of Pierre’s arms each. They dragged him into the hallway. Neither Jim nor I said a word. When they had taken Pierre out I moved a step closer to the coffee machine, taking his place in line.

     His fault for not waiting. From the hallway there was a quick gunshot and then the coffee was done.

     “Ah, yes, finally. Here you go Pete, made it a little stronger this morning. Busy day ahead eh?”

     “Those files aren’t going to organize themselves!” We laughed for approximately ten point five seconds, quickly poured the black liquid into our cups and shuffled back into the hallway. As I stepped into the hallway I noticed two things. One, I had no spoon for my coffee to stir in the powdered milk packets back at my office, and Two, Pierre was lying dead on the floor. Luckily for me, clutched in his hand was a most marginal spoon. I reached down, plucked it up, and continued on my way.

     There was a spot of red on the spoon and I cleaned it off with the handkerchief I kept in my pocket at all times. It was pure white like the cup I held in my hand, only afterward it became an off pink. I shoved it back into my pocket and walked back into the office.

     The powdered milk fell into my drink, clumping around the top. The spoon served nicely to mix it in and made for quite a pleasant taste. As I sipped my coffee I looked up to one of my white notes which said Business as usual.

Written By,

Ashton Macaulay